Belgium U20 Boys Forced to Forfeit Bronze Medal Game at WJUC

On the results page of the World Juniors Ultimate Championships that concluded over the weekend, the Belgium vs. France Boys bronze medal game is shown as a 15-0 victory for France. However, the game was played, and France actually beat Belgium 15-7. The reason for the discrepancy is that WFDF required Belgium to retroactively forfeit the game. This was a punishment due to a complaint about a warm-up song that Belgium chanted before the bronze medal match.

Here is the song:

Yes we are the Belgium teamIt’s never been seenWe love beer and chocolate cakeSo we’re gonna fight for God and sakeWe are beasts and our girls looks niceAnd our dicks are negro sized

An anonymous third party not involved in the game overheard the cheer and reported it to the tournament director. WFDF allowed the game to finish but punished the Belgians by declaring the result a 15-0 forfeit. Neither team was informed about the complaint or the punishment until after the match had concluded. The Belgians were also banned from the tournament-organized trading night and party that evening.

Belgium has reached out to apologize to the individual who was unhappy with the cheer. “This is the kind of song you sing all year in funny tournaments and everybody laughs,” said a Belgian player. “But here, something else happened…Sorry for that, we really do understand.”

“There was no intent to hurt anyone,” said Belgian coach Quentin Walsh. “It’s a stupid thing teenagers can say. The song is usually ‘super size’ and the singer changes it. We asked to apologize directly but WFDF said it was an anonymous complaint so it was not possible to apologize. We look at it as stupidity from people who are not yet adults. There was certainly no intent of racism. We don’t have the same vision of this word as Americans do. The players realize now that this kind of thing can have a bad effect and can hurt, and they really wanted to apologize. It was stupid… they know it now, they didn’t realize before.”

The Belgian federation is expected to make an official statement about the incident shortly. The tournament director, Andrew Portwine, would neither confirm nor deny the incident or the punishment. He wrote, “[I] will simply say the team had some conduct at the event that was not in the spirit of what this sport stands for.” WFDF did not respond to a request for comment.

Belgium was a lightning rod for controversy this week after they added Latvian player Arvids Orlovskis, who had an incredible tournament leading the team with 26 goals and finishing second in assists (23), and Dutch player Ben Oort, widely considered one of the finest young players in Europe. The team well outperformed their initial seed1, reaching the semifinals and putting up a tremendous fight against the USA before falling 15-13.

they were improperly seeded 16th, even though they finished 9th at the last WJUC, which is what seeding is based upon ↩

Ravi Vasudevan is Ultiworld's European editor and a host of the podcast EuroZone. Emails about EuroZone should go to eurozoneultimate@gmail.com. Ravi played for WPI in the US until 2008. He has been living and playing in Europe since 2009 and has competed at WUGC 2012, WUCC 2014 and WUCC 2018.